Federer, Nadal Heavy Favorites In Wimbledon Semifinals

Posted on July 4, 2008

3 Grand Slam champions are through to the semifinals at Wimbledon for the first time since 2005, when all 4 semifinalists already owned a Grand Slam title. The 4th semifinalist Rainer Schuettler is a Grand Slam finalist.

The No. 1 and No. 2 seeds are into the semifinals at Wimbledon for the 5th year in a row. The top two seeds have met in the final here for the last 4 years.

There are two unseeded semifinalists at Wimbledon for the first time since 1997, when there were three unseeded semifinalists. This is the first time that there have been two unseeded semifinalists here since 32 seeds were introduced in 2001. In the history of Wimbledon, there have been 13 unseeded finalists, the most recent being Mark Philippoussis in 2003. Boris Becker (1985) and Goran Ivanisevic (2001) are the only unseeded Wimbledon champions.

The menís semifinalists are all European for the 6th Grand Slam event in a row, and the 3rd successive year at Wimbledon.

Federer is appearing in his 6th consecutive Wimbledon semifinal, equalling the Open Era record of Bjorn Borg and Jimmy Connors. Nadal is appearing in his 3rd successive semifinal here, while Safin and Schuettler are both making their first semifinal appearance at Wimbledon.

Safin is the first ever Russian to reach the last four at Wimbledon, while Schuettler is the first German since Michael Stich in 1997.

Federer and Nadal are one match away from a 3rd successive meeting in the Wimbledon final. There have been 3 previous occasions that the same 2 men have appeared in three successive finals here: